Ilya Kaminsky, From "Alfonso Stands Answerable", Deaf Republic

“I have so much to say to you that l am afraid I shall tell you nothing.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I think my whole life ive been day dreaming.

I remember the way the sun touched my face as I watched my father walk away over and over,

The smell of the air mixed with the flowers in fresh spring as my mother fell apart once again and left me to pick up every piece.

As a child I was always comforted by the “what ifs” that id pull from my imagination.

What if they love me enough tomorrow? What if they read me a story while I sleep?

I felt the wind flowing through my hair and the stars make just enough light to illuminate the path my father ran too with me lingering behind in the dark.

The sounds my fingers made caressing my mother’s cheek trying to make her pain a little less while mine was bleeding out the seams.

What if im the reason? What if I made them hate the life God has given them?

I have never known the truth of unconditional love because my love has always needed a reason, an act of service when I was only learning to tie my shoes.

I was raised in a house full of anger, distortion and begging,

They say you take parts of your childhood with you into adulthood but all I have seemed to hold onto is the rage. I’m unable to love and in return unlovable.

I am sewed together with tiny memories of all of the times I was closed behind my bedroom door asking God to show me himself.

I chase the broken because im only worthy if im fixing something and I am capsized in the grief of others.

I have a tendency to be abrasive and wear my father’s agony on my shoulders like a shield.

What if I disappeared and my heart stopped beating?

Alejandra Pizarnik, tr. by Yvette Siegert, from “Psychopathology Ward”, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972

19 March, 1937 Letters to Véra by Vladimir Nabokov

— Franz Kafka, from a letter to Felice (via lunamonchtuna)

Clarice Lispector, from "Too Much of Life Complete Chronicles," publ. in 2022

Nikos Kazantzakis, from a letter featured in The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis

Franz Kafka, from a letter to Milena Jesenka featured in "Letters to Milena,

Margaret Atwood, from a poem titled "All Bread," featured in Paper Boat: Selected Poems

Mary Szybist, from  “In Tennessee I Found a Firefly”, Granted